Louisiana State University's (LSU) Health Shreveport Feist-Weiller Cancer Center now offers access to an innovative, precision-medicine technology that determines the unique biological characteristics of each patient's cancer tumor.
Once that information is known, physicians can identify tailored chemotherapy or radiation regimens to attack the cancer, according to the center. The new capability is the result of emerging technology called tumor profiling. Feist-Weiller will partner with Caris Life Sciences to offer the technology to cancer patients of University Health Shreveport, a clinical partner of the LSU Health Shreveport School of Medicine.
The region's first clinical molecular profiling program will use Caris' industry tumor profiling service, Caris Molecular Intelligence, to enhance the clinical and research expertise of the Feist-Weiller Cancer Center. The partnership with Caris also includes clinical support, patient and physician education, and system integration. It also creates a forum to pursue joint research opportunities.
Cherie-Ann Nathan, MD, chairman, professor, and director of head and neck surgical oncology and research at LSU Health Shreveport, believes this molecular profiling program will elevate the level of clinical care for patients and also the center's research programs.
In recent years, molecular profiling has become a valuable tool for oncologists when making treatment decisions for patients with difficult-to-treat and/or rare and aggressive cancers. Caris Molecular Intelligence correlates the molecular data from a tumor with biomarker/drug associations from the latest clinical and scientific literature on cancer. This information is used to recommend therapies more or less likely to benefit the patient. It also identifies potential clinical trials for the patient. The system uses traditional pathology analysis methods, along with more-recently developed DNA sequencing technologies.
